


Photographs on the wall

by heather_wolfie



Category: Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe, Mean Girls - Richmond/Benjamin/Fey
Genre: Allucinations, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety, Bi Veronica, F/F, F/M, Heather survived, Kurt Ram and JD died, Nightmares, Post-Canon, all the trigger warning of the original media, bulimic character, comatose character, death mentions, mention of bombs, mention of bus-related injuries, mention of suicides, the Heathers don't know about Duke's bulimia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-09-29 20:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20442131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heather_wolfie/pseuds/heather_wolfie
Summary: Gretchen didn't expect her roommate to be so broken, Cady didn't expect her roommate to be so secretive, and Heather didn't expect her roommate to be so different from her. But I guess stuff like this happens at all times in college.





	1. Cady

Within a week, Cady's part of the room was full of memories. The Lion King playbill from when she went to New York with Janis and Damian (it was the only show they agreed on, having musical numbers, murder, and animals), the poster signed by Damian of the school production of Phaedra he was part of during senior year, the thousands photos she took since Regina gave her a Polaroid camera for her seventeenth birthday two Julies ago, a redraw of one of her childhood photos (the one with the cheetah cub) made by Janis, and some other photos from her life in Kenya.

The other side of the room was immaculate. The girl had barely bothered to hang her clothes(all blue and looking like some sort of school uniform) in her closet and hide the suitcase under her bed. For the rest, it looked exactly like when she entered the room for the first time.

Sometimes a girl, whose name Cady understood to be Mack, came in the room and convinced her to go outside to eat something or do stuff. She was always dresses in yellow. Other times, another girl, Heather, knocked on the door asking Ronnie(since she refused to introduce herself that was all Cady got of her roommate's name) whether she would study/hang/party(never eat, though) with her and Mack. She barely ever received a yes in response.

Although Cady perceived this situation as weird and wished to know more about her roommate and her friends, she was outside of the room long enough for Ronnie to be a very peripheral part of her life. With Janis, Gretchen, Aaron, Damian and Regina in the same college, almost all living on-campus (Regina had a lovely little condo a few block away, but still close enough), Cady was in her room maybe 12% of the time. A good 48% was spent with her friends or in class. The rest was spent with Aaron in his and Damian's room. Nobody was sure how did a sophomore and a freshman end up sharing a room, but they were the only two of their group, excluding Regina of course, that didn't end up with complete strangers. Which was very good, since her best friend surely would never complain about her being in his room so much.

* * *

-So eight fifteen at Regina's?- Janis asked without any actual interest in the answer, trying to copy the cracks on her phone onto a page of her sketchbook to find inspiration.

-I mean, the party is at half past eight, so we could meet up here at eight fifteen and go together- Cady proposed. Aaron kissed her lightly as to say "well thought".

-So we meet at eight fifteen outside my room?- Gretchen squeaked fast, in the hope that nobody interrupted her.

Everybody agreed on the place and time and kept doing their things. It was fun hanging out on the lawn outside the cafeteria, especially not around the meals, because they were the only ones there.

Gretchen was explaining to Cady what exactly had happened that summer between Karen and this guy who then went to study in Britain, Janis was still examining her phone for new cracks-induced inspiration, while Aaron and Damian where blaming each other for some laundry related disaster. They kept talking and studying and discussing and meticulously observing any imperfection a screen can have(the last one was mostly Janis) until seven, when they parted to prepare themselves for Regina's nineteenth birthday party.

Cady put on the only dress she brought with her, something that was bought during the time she was a Plastic, by whom exactly she couldn't tell. She really liked it, and it was the only thing remotely fancy she had brought to college. A party at Regina's condo definitely wasn't a place made for her usual flannel shirts. She decided it was too hot for the thighs, even though it was almost Halloween, and the only thing missing were the shoes, since she only took with her a pair of converse and some trekking boots(Gretchen talked her out of bringing the crocks, but forgot to tell her to bring some more formal footwear). It was already ten past eight.

Cady noticed some blue high heels in the other corner of the room. They would have been okay, since the dress was mostly white with a thick blue net connecting the top to the skirt, but they were her roommate's.

Ronnie was packing a big blue bag(was there something about this girl that wasn't blue?), while on the phone.

-Yes, mom. Heather will drive. No, the other one. We'll be in Sherwood tomorrow morning. We'll go with the Chandlers. For lunch.- After saying the last phrase, Ronnie's face darkened. -It's not stupid, mom. Plus, it's what Heather wants. Yes, that one. Bye, gotta motor if I want to arrive before next year.-

That was the most Cady ever heard her saying. Also, this girl's slang was stuck in the 80's. Cady worked up the courage to ask her about the heels.

-Hey, those are yours, right?-

The girl nodded, absent minded.

-May I use them? Just tonight. I'm going at a friend's birthday party and I forgot to bring shoes-

She stared at the heels for a while, then nodded again.

-I won't need them this weekend-

-Thank you! You're my lifesaver-

Ronnie kind of smiled. A sad smile, but a smile nonetheless. Cady felt it like a victory.

-So where are you going?- she asked, hoping that their little conversation could last a little longer. But Ronnie didn't answer. She typed something in her phone then left.

Cady wore the shoes(they were little, but still okay) and headed to Gretchen's room.


	2. Heather Duke

Heather Duke wasn't pretty. No matter what her friends told her, she knew she wasn't hot or attractive or even nice to look at. And, on top of that, she was fat. Every time she looked in the mirror, she despised the image that looked back. No matter how much she tried, she always weighted too much. She looked so different from her friends. They were all tall, thin, pretty and Caucasian. Veronica was slightly different as she had darker hair than the other two, but still fit perfectly in with them. Heather on the other handâ€¦

* * *

She usually threw up in a toilet near the gym, that was deserted most days. There was a little part of her brain that told her not to. That it wasn't going to help, that it was only going to hurt her. But there was the more analytical part of her brain, the one that counted the calories and could reflect over the number shown in the scale, that knew she had to get rid of the additional pounds without Heather or Veronica worrying for her. Because they would worry and tell all those lies (things like "you are pretty, Heather" or "what do you mean, you need to lose weight? You are one of the most thin people I know). If anyone keen they would make her stop, and Heather couldn't afford staying the same exact fattie she was know. What if Heather woke up from the coma and decided than she couldn't be friends with such a girl anymore? Her whole life would crash. People only liked her because she was an Heather. She couldn't afford to be a nobody.

* * *

Her roommate Gretchen was getting ready for something, probably a party,while Heather was just lazily putting the essential for the trip in her backpack. She didn't really like the idea of coming back home just to weep at Heather' s hospital bed, hoping for a miracle, but she was the only one with both a driving licence and a car so she had to go with Heather and Veronica (Veronica had a driving licence, but no car, while Heather had a car, in a garage in Sherwood, waiting for her to actually learn how to drive).

Gretchen squeaked looking at her phone. -My friends are going to be here in like, five minutes. Is that a problem?- she asked all at once, like breathing was just some ancillary thing.

-Yeah, I'm leaving anyway-

-Where to? If I can ask. Can I?-

This was what Heather hated the most about having Gretchen as a roommate. She already had a preoccupied shaky anxious friend who was really into being the mom frond if the group, she didn't need another. But Gretchen wasn't the kind of person who acknowledges the difference between someone you know and don't have and a friend, so she was going to treat Heather as she belonged to the latter category, while for her, her roommate barely fit in the former.

-My hometown-

-That's so fetch!-

Another thing to hate about Gretchen (other than the terrible use of slang nobody else ever used before) was that she took every information like they told her her grandmother no longer had cancer. She was so enthusiastic about everything. If Heather were the person she was not even a year before, she would have shushed her. But, with Heather and Veronica (and Martha back home) she was really working hard about being what the others called "a good person".

She just told her she was running late and left. She was going to the gym's toilet, but she saw Heather coming from afar. Well, either Heather or a very corporeal and yellow will-o'-the-wisp carrying a very tiny trolley luggage. She hoped she wasn't going to ask any questions about where was she going.

She didn't. They walked in the right direction, got to Veronica's room, and then with Veronica went to the parking lot.

Then they got into the car (Heather Duke was driving while the two lovebirds were on the backseat) and started their trip to the best place any of then could go to, the only place that ever managed to make them remember every single bad memory they had.

Soon, Veronica fell asleep on Heather's lap and nobody had the courage to wake her up when her turn driving came. This trip was going to be really hard for her.


	3. Janis

-I love the jeans.- said Regina to Janis as all she walked inside her home.

Somehow Janis was both impressed and let down. Regina was indeed a freshman in college and anything too big and flashy would be weird, but she was still Regina George the rich, spoiled girl who was living alone in a condo at barely 19. The condo was a normal apartment nothing extreme about it. the wall were painted white, or maybe a very pale pink, with some photos framed and hung. Some where big and high, others were nothing more than a medallion where Janis's shoulder would be if she stood right against the wall.

There weren't a lot, and Janis knew why Regina choose most of them. Like the one took right before she blew her eighth birthday's candles unlit. It was not one of the biggest (those were mainly Regina's different outfits for the different spring fling dances) but it was big enough for Janis to recognize herself next to Regina, both missing a few teeth, and to know that behind them there where Regina's parents and grandma. She probably hung that one up because, a few weeks later, Grandma Gina died and that was the last photos they had with her.

Janis hated knowing so much about Regina. She used to be her number one sidekick, being used for most of her childhood and yet, from time to time, she allowed herself to think of those as "The good old days when everything was alright".

Maybe she thought of the past like that because life can only be worse after your best friend outs you and the whole school makes fun of you and you find yourself alone. Or maybe it just was romanticizing her past. the idea of being liked was not a bad one after all.

And Regina was no longer as bad as she used to be. All it took was widespread pain and a whole year of "civilian life" for the plastics and they became quite nice people.

* * *

The party wasn't too boring, but it sure as hell wasn't thrilling. At least for Janis. Regina invited a few hundreds people, and bought a few tons of alcohol, and thus everyone else was having the time of their lives.

Probably Janis would have too, if this weren't one of her first times drinking, and the worlds didn't felt like she was dreaming and it didn't got worse anytime she wasn't moving or she was dancing. She just had to walk around hoping to not trip on air to not become more drunk than she was. And also to avoid talking to anyone to not perforate their eardrums. That seemed like a doable thing when she decided to drink that night, but soon became the hardest thing to do. Being drunk was terrifying.

Was life real? Was she dreaming? Did she pass out five hours ago? Was she even at the party for five hours? Did she really manage to loose herself in Regina's house?

Either the last was true, or the living room, where she was headed, morphed into a bedroom. Janis fell on the bed with her face looking at the ceiling, hoping to not vomit. She was looking forward the end of the party, or at least the moment when someone else of the people than came in the car with her would want to go home. At least she would throw up, go to bed, probably hear her roommate walking in or out of the room a few times, then wake up the morning after like a truck hit her. Not try to be okay and pretend to be enjoying herself.

She heard giggling coming from the hallway. She tried to stand up, but soon fell back, now sitting on the edge of the bed. She hated being drunk. But she did like beer.

Cady was now against the door frame being kissed by Aaron. They clearly didn't see Janis on the bed. Or they clearly didn't care. They were so busy making out, like the other one was the only thing to ever exist.

Janis tried another time to get on her feet. She felt so much worse. She shouldn't have stopped moving.

-Janis?- Cady whispered as she was walking through the door. Janis wasn't too sure what she replied, but it probably wasn't anything coherent.

* * *

The internet is full of memes about gay people's first crushes being their best friends. It's a widespread situation. To happen twice, though? Unlikely. To be told by both of them that she is in love with them? Not only unlikely, but also painful. To have to endure the one she's currently crushing on being all nice and smitten with her boyfriend? Definitely painful. To run into the previous crush right after walking out of a room to let the current one fuck her boyfriend? The worst thing ever. But you know, Janis was at Regina's birthday party in Regina's condo.

-Janis, would you mind not vomiting around? The maid only comes on Sunday and I would like to not have puke on my carpet for a whole day.

She wasn't really throwing up, but anyone could tell she was going to.

-Fuck you- Janis somehow managed to gather some random thoughts, not really meant to be shouted to Regina. Who cared? Regina probably deserved a fuck you anyway.

-Janis, you're so fucking drunk. Can you not sit on my floor? At least go in the bathroom.

Regina helped her to stand up holding her by her left hand and right side of the waist. The movement was too sudden, but still meant to help. But Janis wasn't in the position of actually knowing what she was talking about or even who she was talking to, so she ended up saying:Â -Why do you even bother pretending to care? Everyone knows you're a bitch.- instead of "thanks".

That night totally was going in the best direction possible.


End file.
